The latest poll from The West Australian is showing a small two-party preferred swing in voting intention towards Labor since the last election.

Last election the Coalition had 47.45% first preference votes, Labor 36.80% and the Greens 8.93%. The West's poll has these figures now as 48%, 35% and 14%. This suggests that the Greens have become the protest vote party of first choice sucking up some of the competing minor party votes.

The end result is a 2PP vote of 52-48, which contrasts with 53.26% to 46.74% at the last election. I'm not sure what the sample size is, but it would be very unlikely to be large enough for this to be a statistically significant result from the last election.

The Westpoll says this would result in the loss by the Liberals of Swan (which Antony Green has as notionally Labor because of the redistribution). It should be noted however that the sitting member Steve Irons only won the seat in 2007. He should have built some extra margin in there because he is now the incumbent.

The poll has some other interesting numbers on the mining industry advertisements and religious beliefs of Gillard and Abbott.

"Westpoll also found that the resumption of anti-mining tax advertisements by the junior and mid-cap miners may have a negative impact on the Labor vote, although not as high as the miners were hoping.

While 63 per cent of respondents said the ads would not influence their vote, 22 per cent said they were mildly or strongly turned off Labor and another 13 per cent said the ads would influence them to vote Labor.

Asked if Ms Gillard's atheism made a difference to their vote, 76 per cent said it made no difference, 11 per cent said it made them more likely to vote Labor and 12 per cent said it made them more likely to vote coalition.

Mr Abbott's Catholicism made no difference to how 73 per cent of respondents would vote, while 17 per cent said it made them more likely to vote Labor and 10 per cent said it made them more likely to vote coalition."

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